Microsoft spins Vista figures

Software giant Microsoft released a statement this week that
its Vista operating system was selling a lot better than XP did in its early
days. Redmond has claimed 20 million Vista licenses sold in its
first month in comparison to XP's 17 million in two months. We wrote about it
yesterday here.

But comparisons with five years ago do not really hold
water.It sounds like Microsoft has
managed to sell 20 million Vista copies in a month, when the reality is that it
will have signed lots of OEM agreements to its cronies such as Dell. Dell has a
huge inventory of XP stock which needs to be wiped and replaced with Vista.

Dell does not have to pay for them, it just has to return
them and swap them for Vista licences.

Then there is the small matter of changing times.When XP came out there were far less
computers on the market. Since then home use has swelled considerably. If
Microsoft couldn't match XP in sales then there would be serious problems.